It’s been all in the family at Modern Office Methods (MOM) in Cincinnati since 1957. That family tradition of ownership continues with Kevin McCarthy, a 30-year veteran of the industry and the dealership’s current president and CEO.
With a long history, yearly revenues in the $40 million range, innovative programs such as its FleetCare managed print services program and the JumpSTART Your Nonprofit marketing and community involvement program as well as an uncanny ability to evolve with market and technology changes, MOM is a shining example of a successful office technology dealership.
I had the opportunity to interview Kevin about the company his father founded, his own tenure in the industry, and the various strategies, innovative programs, and new initiatives that continue to keep MOM relevant in a dynamic industry.
How’s business?
McCarthy: Great, we just had one of our best months ever in October. If we can follow it up with three more, it will be spectacular.
How was it prior to October?
McCarthy: Not bad, it’s never as good as I want it to be, but that might be because my expectations are too high.
You’ve been in the business for 30 years, how’d you get into this business initially, was it by accident or design?
McCarthy: By design, it’s a family business; my father started this back in 1957.
Any doubts about getting in?
McCarthy: When I first got out of school as a small family business, it was, ‘Why don’t you come join the business?’ I didn’t want to be the SOB (son of the Boss), so I first went outside the industry and took a job in Seattle. I loved what I was doing, but every time I saw or talked to my Dad, he kept asking when was I coming back and coming to work [for him]. Eventually, I couldn’t take those questions anymore and came back.
You’ve acquired a couple of former Xerox office equipment dealers over the years, which have helped contribute to MOM’s growth, what made those appealing to you?
McCarthy: The people. They were good, talented people with good client relationships. As we’re always trying to grow our businesses, adding good talented people is a great way to do it. There’s very little up-front costs; because the way the Xerox agents were structured they didn’t really have a lot of MIF so we ended up buying them over time and it’s worked out pretty well.
Your FleetCare MPS program has been growing like crazy, what do you attribute that to?
McCarthy: It took awhile for us to figure out what we needed to do to make it work and once we put a dedicated leader on top of it and a strong structure in place it just started to explode. In fact we have more printers under contract than we have MFPs. Then you need good people who are really focused on it, believe in your program, and will follow your program.
I want to improve the program and we’re looking at how we can tweak what we’re currently doing and make it better because I think we can make it better.
What was the biggest challenge of getting the FleetCare program up and running?
McCarthy: We didn’t turn it over to someone who was fully dedicated to it. What happened was our old copy reps were saying [customers] weren’t buying it; I think they just weren’t talking about it.
Who in your organization is responsible for selling MPS, do you have specialists?
McCarthy: We have a sales leader and he has six dedicated reps.
Were those dedicated reps easy to find?
McCarthy: Good sales people are never easy to find. Some of them were recommended by friends from outside the industry and one came out of the copier industry. There’s no consistent way we find them.
What do you know now about MPS that you wish you did when you first started offering it?
McCarthy: I’d start with specialists.
I think your JumpSTART program is a brilliant marketing and public relations strategy, what are the origins of that? (Jump START is a contest in which area nonprofits in Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton, OH–the markets MOM serves–apply for a chance to win one of three office technology makeovers worth up to $20,000.)
McCarthy: A friend of mine had a program that was somewhat similar to JumpSTART in a different market. I loved the idea because it allowed us to give back to your community. We get a lot of attention from it and have a lot of people visiting our Website just because of the program.
I’m also impressed by your Mobile Solutions Open Houses; those have drawn attention to some of your solutions and you’re seeing some sales as a result of these Open Houses?
McCarthy: We’re beginning to. The forms product that’s part of our FleetCare fleet of software is starting to take off. We have between $100,000-$200,000 proposed in that between now and the end of the year. It’s a great product.
It allows us to import the actual document for our client and set it up such so they can fill it out on their iPad or tablet and get the client’s signature. It improves the ability to move the document through the organization more quickly and therefore improves their cash flow. They can now turn things around quickly especially if they’re a service organization.
What’s your take on managed services or managed IT services? Any plans in those areas?
McCarthy: The short answer is we’re not doing very much right now. We’ve been trying to solidify the back end. We have a partner we’re working with who will handle the back end. And we have the feet on the street and have had them for a while. We’ve been talking about it for two years but we want to make sure that when we launch next year we don’t misfire.
Who’s the partner for the back end?
McCarthy: Ricoh—they will take care of this for us. They’ve invested millions of dollars in this and have 47 people on their Help Desk. I’ve been down to visit their Help Desk and it would take years and more money than I have to build the infrastructure they have, and they’ve been able to do it better. How can I go wrong with a $22 billion organization? It’s going to be a great partnership.
We’re their beta dealer. Our sales team is chomping at the bit to have it. We already have our first external client lined up. They have 11,000 external employees and they want us to build and help them with their IT. Other clients are asking us for it too and our sales people are getting ready to take it to market. We launch in January. But I want to do us first; I want to eat our own dog food.
You’ve recently added Samsung to your product offerings, what makes them a good choice for MOM?
McCarthy: They have great technology, and the technologies they have shown to us are very complementary to the other product lines we carry. The opportunity to share some of this other technology is going to be large for us.
Are you talking about their display technology?
McCarthy: They have some unbelievable displays and as much money as they plow back into their research every year it’s amazing to see the things they have coming out. I can’t share some of it because I’m under NDA. They’re a huge company and are growing rapidly and they want to be in this space and I’m sure they’re going to be successful. Their growth path is mind boggling to me.
What’s next for MOM?
McCarthy: MNS is definitely the next big thing. We’ve also got projects going internally to make us more efficient in what we do, and part of the effect of us being more efficient means our sales force will better understand some of the technology we’re trying to sell.
